A Plague Tale: Innocence (PS4)
Asobo Studio was quite wise in writing their grim tale set in a bleak world, because such a setting is an excellent platform to show the power of hope. When I first saw the name A Plague Tale: Innocence, I couldn’t help but wonder why Innocence was appended to what seemed like a perfectly good title, but the game isn’t just about the plague and the suffering it causes. This is a game where young people are fighting against extreme adversity, but rather than going with the simple route of having them break under pressure, Asobo Studio paints this as a picture of hopeful persistence, that dogged indomitability that people can show even under extreme duress. This isn’t so much a loss of innocence tale as it is the examination of emotional maturation under stress, a stellar story coming through as we explore the limits and power of resolve and companionship.
The story takes place in 14th century France where Amicia de Rune, the teenage daughter of a local lord, is quickly jolted from her idyllic life. The family chateau is attacked by an inquisition, the armed men slaying whoever they can find as they search for Hugo de Rune, Amicia’s sickly five year old brother. Amicia is forced to flee with her brother in tow, the two heading off into a world that is suddenly being ravaged by a terrifying plague that not only kills those infected by it, but seems to be drawing out rats in the thousands, giant carpets of black rolling across the land and the creatures bursting through walls and emerging from the ground like geysers of insatiable death. Amicia’s flight is constantly in peril, but over the course of the game you’ll come to understand why The Inquisition wants Hugo, what the nature of his affliction is, and what has sent the rats in such a frenzy. Primarily though, this plight is the platform that tests our two protagonists and the small group of characters they meet along the way, the serious threat that this constant struggle poses drawing out some beautiful personal development.
Amicia de Rune is certainly the strongest story we follow and the shoes we most often find ourselves in. When things begin, she has had almost no contact with her brother due to his illness, meaning that as soon as he is foisted upon her in the chaos of the Inquisition’s attack, she finds herself just as distant from Hugo as the player is. We learn about his affliction and behavior at the same time she does and we feel the struggle of trying to keep this sheltered child in check during an extremely dire situation he doesn’t have the life experience to properly grasp yet. While he is no doubt a burden at times because of this, instigating a few unnecessary dangerous situations because of his childishness, he also often trying to do his best to listen or extremely thankful for what Amicia is doing for him. His youthful innocence is charming even though it must fight against the world around him to exist, and as the situation gets more and more complicated, Hugo is forced to undergo a change to his world view that thankfully does not outright break him. He is still the same child but the darkness of the world has left a mark on him emotionally, but Amicia’s attempts to adjust to the world are perhaps given the larger spotlight.
Amicia’s desperate struggle to not only survive but to keep Hugo alive as well certainly takes a toll on her, something embodied perfectly by her reaction to what could be called the game’s first boss fight. The two siblings find themselves in a plague-addled town where a man has whipped people up into a frenzy, and believing the two new arrivals might be responsible for the plague, they chase them down with the intent to kill them. Amicia is eventually cornered by this man, the two facing off in a battle that starts off with him boasting about how he fought in the war and will crush these children with ease. As you begin to damage him more and more though, the bluster and bravado give way, his taunts replaced by the desperate pleas of a grief stricken man who begs you to kill him so he can be sent to see his deceased children. This harrowing moment of having to take a man’s life sticks with Amicia, the girl asking for forgiveness at the church and reminded of it the next time she sees a person who she can’t safely get past without resorting to killing once again. Over time, Amicia learns the necessity of taking such drastic measures to ensure her survival, and yet when she starts receiving help from other characters, they too comment on how surprising it is that she’s becoming more and more comfortable with the violence she must participate in to survive.
Still, despite being asked to do things far graver than the teenage girl had ever expected to do, Amicia is not left a broken woman by the experience. In moments of safety and calm, there is still a bit of wonder left in her soul as she jokes with the friends she makes and speaks of fantastical stories she still somewhat wants to be real. Like Hugo, she is not defined just by the harrowing experiences of the now but by how they influence who she was before, and while they both need to adjust their lives in lieu of such a drastic change and the constant heavy requirements it forces upon them, the two follow character paths that deal with the traumatic life they now live without becoming completely swallowed by it. In fact, it is because they retain much of who they are even in this dire situation that so many of the game’s darker moments carry such weight still. The game has some harrowing sights and heart-wrenching moments, the siblings asked to do things even the player might struggle to complete. Along their journey they come across the aftermath of a battle between the English and French in the Hundred Years’ War, the area absolutely covered with corpses that there is no way to cross beyond walking across the lifeless soldier’s bodies. In another situation, they refuge they seek in a farmhouse is challenged by an incursion of rats, and the pig that Hugo was so happily playing with before must be guided over as a sacrifice to distract the ravenous vermin, all while Amicia can’t bring herself to tell the young boy the intended fate for the pig as they slowly guide it to its doom. The only knock to the efficacy of these scenarios is the character models not always being able to match the emotion of the moment or in the voices, but there are still wonderful performances to be found even if the technology isn’t always able to capture what the actors lend to the story.
Had A Plague Tale: Innocence only been a procession of bleak scenarios, they would no doubt lose their impact, and surprisingly, despite the examples just given, there is a degree of restraint. To watch a human be consumed by the rat swarms is always portrayed as a terrible experience rather than robbed of its horror when you have to repeatedly use the tactic to survive, but the violence is never drawn out or gratuitous. There are gruesome fates to be found in the game but they are not presented with the level of detail that they’ll make your stomach lurch, instead the concepts of them the means by which the game sells the threat this plague poses to the world and the depths people sink to as they try to find safety in a world on the brink. There are good people found along the journey too, characters who show that even in moments of incredible strife there is camaraderie in the world that is not motivated solely by self-interest. There is always a ray of hope somewhere, even at the lowest points, and the push towards a better situation continues to keep the game from diving too deep into its dark subject matter. There are periods where you might not even have to confront anything emotionally challenging, the game taking a chance to remind us who these people are and showing us that we still have reason to believe there can be a happy ending in a world that will not pull its punches elsewhere.
The emotional story and its mysteries are certainly A Plague Tale: Innocence’s main draw and an enormous strength, the plot well paced to give moments of hope and heartbreak, of discovery and further complications to the core mysteries. Had it focused on its plot alone, it could already be an exceptional experience that did enough to earn it high praise, but to immerse yourself into the experience, you will be taking control of Amicia and her companions as they need to make their way across France to whatever opportunities for safety show themselves. The gameplay consists mostly of stealth puzzles, the player asked to work their way around either the soldiers of the Inquisition or the carpets of rats to make it to safety. The soldiers must be outsmarted, the player asked to take advantage of blind spots in their patrols and distractions or else they risk immediate death. The rats, meanwhile, will fill all available space they can in their pursuit of a meal, but their fear of fire will be your constant weapon for keeping them at bay, the player interacting with torches and other methods of lighting up an area to work their way safely through these groups. Luckily, even though you almost always have a partner tailing you, they act intelligently and rarely get themselves into trouble on their own, their potential deaths almost always tied to a failure in your own considerations and still rare even if you aren’t trying to babysit their every move.
Your companions are one way you can help overcome these situations though. Hugo’s small size lets him to slip through gaps to the other side of locked gates for example, and abilities like lockpicking or a stealth takedown are tied to other people who join your company along the way, their own stories making them a great addition to the narrative as well as helpful tools in the ever evolving stealth puzzles. Amicia is not without her own ways of turning a situation to her advantage, the game gradually doling out new items she can craft to work the environment in her favor. To create new fire sources that will force back the rats she can toss incendiaries, to take out unarmored guards she can hurl a rock at their heads with a sling, and if she wants to mix distraction with an enemy takedown, she even can hurl a scented bait at soldiers to have them contend with the rats instead. The rollout of these is expertly done to ensure that the stealth continues to evolve consistently, new abilities still appearing close to the climax of the adventure. There is a degree of linearity to the progression, many stealth challenges and progression puzzles having one or two solutions that aren’t too hard to figure out, but others can open things up enough to require you to mix and match your skills effectively.
An interesting wrinkle is added to the stealth gameplay by way of the crafting system. Materials collected can be used for different purposes, effectively balancing their use as you need to cautiously weigh up your options. You can save up your materials to work towards upgrades, some like the sling upgrade that reduces its sound wonderful for helping you assault guards from afar. However, the amount needed may mean you can’t create your tools as often. Some are outright necessary for progression at parts and the game is usually kind enough to put enough materials there to ensure you can pass the puzzle as long as you aren’t wasteful, but in other cases, certain tools can help you overcome a tough challenge by altering its design or invalidating one of its obstacles. Amicia can’t do much if she’s caught by a guard, but if you craft a certain powder, you can knock them out right before they would otherwise kill you. This costs a large amount of crafting materials though, as does the similar flammable mixture that can be placed anywhere so you can get around rats even when no other light source is available. Weighing your options requires more intelligent crafting choices while also giving you a few strong options to overcome an area you might otherwise be stuck on, but thankfully, while a death can set you back a ways, the checkpointing does usually put you in the right area so you aren’t retreading too much ground.
Perhaps on its own in a game with a weaker story the stealth wouldn’t be impressive despite its interesting angles and constant evolution, but paired with a story so focused on desperate survival, it helps carry the interactivity and plays well with the plot. There are definitely moments that do ask for an intelligent approach, problem solving, quick action, or complicated sneaking, the game certainly not handing you successes for free and making sure that the gameplay has enjoyable challenges to overcome that fit well within the world whose tone has been established so well.
THE VERDICT: A Plague Tale: Innocence’s emotional narrative is a riveting adventure from start to finish that expertly balances desperation and perseverance. It is a story that places its young protagonists in dire situations and asks them to do some grim deeds to survive, but it is not a plot so mired in darkness that it depresses the player. Instead, it’s a game about the struggle to push on despite all that the world can throw at you, the player’s role in the narrative well conceived as they need to guide Amicia and Hugo around lethal dangers and resort to extreme measures to help them survive. You know the game won’t shy away from depicting the bleakness of this plague and its effects on people, but the moments of hope and humanity found throughout are what make this a truly moving and marvelous work of interactive fiction.
And so, I give A Plague Tale: Innocence for PlayStation 4…
A FANTASTIC rating. Perhaps the puzzle solving and stealth systems at play would only be Good on their own, but as part of the incredibly strong narrative, they are an excellent means of experiencing what Amicia and Hugo are going through. Rather than simply seeing them in peril as you would a film or show, you are repeatedly asked to guide them not only around people and creatures willing to kill them the moment they can seize them, but you are part of the moments that test them most emotionally. You must guide that unfortunate swine to its demise, Hugo written so wonderfully that you feel the pain of having to hide your intentions from him until the moment he will see the results with his innocent eyes. Still, Hugo is not simply a burden gameplay-wise or emotionally, the child having plenty of moments of brightness and wonder that allow you to still find happiness and humor in a world that could have otherwise been too dark for its own good. You aren’t just sneaking around cities filled with the dead or desperately forcing you way through an unending tide of rats, you have moments where the characters can relax and play, enjoy beautiful sights or get to know each other. You are able to develop an emotional connection with them that makes the actions they have to take during the moments of desperation have such a strong impact, and the game knows to not immerse you too deep into the dark and depressing state of things so that you won’t become emotionally exhausted. You are always forward facing, pushing towards new ways that might help you overcome this dire situation, and because you are the one who is overcoming the environment and the enemies therein, you can feel for yourself that there is hope for these two and others.
An immersive, story rich experience, A Plague Tale: Innocence is excellent because it knows how to handle its grim subject matter. I have played games and seen media with heavier topics or a greater embrace of gruesome bleakness, but A Plague Tale: Innocence is not emotionally draining or overly depressing. It doesn’t hold itself back when it wants to present a terrifying sight, but it is careful in its portrayal of things to make sure they leave an impact, whether it be something harrowing or those moments of brightness that make for such an effective counterbalance. Even if the gameplay doesn’t impress the player in the end, the tale of Amicia and Hugo is such a powerful one that it can continue to enthrall the player with its narrative, characters, and themes in equal measure.